


Helena Watches The Grinch And Other Stuff Happens Too

by thicccsapphic



Category: Birds of Prey (And the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/F, Fluff, Snowed In, fear not there is no angst in sight, helena watches the grinch for the first time, there's only one bed!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:41:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26168842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thicccsapphic/pseuds/thicccsapphic
Summary: The gang (plus Harley and Cass) have a girls night watching the Grinch and get snowed in And There's Only One Bed!!!
Relationships: Helena Bertinelli/Dinah Lance
Comments: 4
Kudos: 60





	Helena Watches The Grinch And Other Stuff Happens Too

**Author's Note:**

> Hello burps of prey this is my first time ever writing fanfic so please be nice!!! I've been consuming so much fantastic content lately that I felt obligated to give back to the Dinah x Helena community bc let's be real we're all way too invested in this lol. If y'all like it I may write more (super special Christmas chapter which I might add as a second chapter to this work or separately)!!! Let's go lesbians!!!!!
> 
> Feel free to reach out on my tumblr @thicccsapphic !

“What the fuck is the _Grinch_?” asks Helena, with a scandalized tone more appropriate for asking something like “what the fuck is this rotten fish doing in my silverware drawer?” or perhaps responding to someone who called her “the Crossbow Killer”.

‘Ohmygod you’ve never seen the GRINCH?” whines Harley, her entire hand jammed in a jar of marshmallow fluff and painted eyes comically wide. “Dinah, this poor baby has never seen the Grinch! When I find whoever was in charge of her pop culture education. . .”

“I doubt there was much time for the Grinch while she was training to avenge her family in rural Sicily for the past fifteen years, Harley,” notes Dinah with an amused glint in her eye. Helena shoots her a grateful look, only to return her face to its usual scowl when Dinah continues, “But seeing as your hit list is done and we’re all here now. . .”

“Harley, aren’t you Jewish? You don’t even celebrate Christmas,” interrupts Renee, who was on her fourth whiskey for the night and didn’t seem to be in a particularly Grinch-watching mood.

“Au contraire!” sings Harley. “The Grinch is a nondenominational holiday _classic_ which is why we’re watching it right now!” With this, she darts over to Dinah’s tiny TV and jams the DVD she’s holding into the slot. Helena hopes fruitlessly that perhaps Harley had gotten too much marshmallow fluff on the disc for it to work but soon the screen lights up with the DVD loading symbol. Helena groans.

“Can’t we just go hunt down bad guys or something?”

“Helena, have you looked out the window lately? All the bad guys are probably inside like us,” says Dinah. Helena steals a glance outside, and is surprised to see fat flakes of snow swirling fiercely past the window and piling onto the ground. It isn’t like her to be so unaware of her surroundings, but she’s surprisingly relaxed around the Birds (and sometimes Harley and Cass too, although they made up for it with their unthinkable levels of chaos).

“Please? I think you’ll really like it,” Dinah says, slipping Helena a sweet smile that she can't resist. Helena groans.

“All right,” she concedes, and Dinah, Harley, and Cass all cheer.

“I’ll make popcorn!” trills Harley, roller skating into the kitchen.

“Aren’t you worried she’s going to start a fire or something?” Helena wonders.

“Honestly? Yes. But shhh, the movie is starting!” Dinah snuggles under her fuzzy blanket and throws the other side over Helena, who is suddenly warm for a reason that had nothing to do with the blanket at all.

Helena, whose memories of childhood Christmases were full of midnight Mass and formal family dinners with wine for her parents and sparkling cider for her and Pino and expensive velvet dresses, couldn’t remember ever seeing a Christmas movie that wasn’t in black and white. But Dinah seems so entranced by the prospect that Helena is determined to give it a try. It didn’t take long for her to start liking it, and didn’t even notice Harley roller-skating back into the room with three huge bowls of slightly burnt popcorn and four mugs of instant hot chocolate, the kind with the little marshmallows in the packet.

“Canary only had enough popcorn for three bowls, so I was thinking you and her could share--” Harley starts to explain, only for Helena to shush her loudly without moving her eyes from the screen, her brow furrowed in intense concentration. The rest of the movie follows a similar pattern, with every perceived disturbance met with an annoyed hushing noise from Helena, who was taking in the movie with a level of focus Dinah had previously only seen when they were kicking ass and taking names. Helena is _enamored_ by the Grinch. The only time her focus breaks is when she reaches for popcorn at the same time as Dinah and feels their hands touch. Helena turns red and momentarily forgets how to breathe, almost missing the Grinch’s redemption arc, until her focus is recaptured by his mad dash after the sleigh to save the Whos’ Christmas goods, at which Helena gasps out loud and spontaneously applauds until she seems to catch herself and clears her throat, glancing around to see if anyone had seen. Cass and Renee are both asleep and snoring loudly, Cass on the floor and Renee on an armchair. Harley had gotten distracted by a clump of shiny tinsel she had plucked off of Dinah’s tiny plastic tree and was oblivious to the world. Only Dinah had noticed, and gave Helena an electric smile that coincided with the Grinch’s heart growing three sizes. Helena thinks to herself that she knows how the Grinch felt. The movie forgotten, she looks into Dinah’s beautiful brown eyes, and Dinah looks back. Helena’s chest fizzled warmly like Christmas cider and she can’t look away, feels herself leaning in--

“Oopsie!” sings Harley as an ornament shattered onto the ground. Helena blinked. The moment was over. Fighting a rising disappointment, she grabs for her motorcycle jacket and starts to stand up.

“I should go,” she says, trying not to show her disappointment in her voice.

“H, there’s no way you can bike home in this,” counters Dinah. “Look out the window.” Unwillingly, Helena glances out the window and is surprised to see what looks like a good six inches of snow on the ground. Defeated, she slumps back onto the couch.

“Hey, it’s not a problem. Just stay the night. You can share my bed,” says Dinah, and Helena is filled with the sparkling cider feeling again, completely missing Harley’s knowing, toothy grin.

“I’ll make a pillow fort in here for me and the kid!” says Harley brightly, and with the focus of a soldier starts pulling pillows and blankets from every surface, including off of Renee, who grumbles in her sleep but doesn’t wake up.

“Uhhh, are you sure? I mean, I can sleep on the floor, or outside…” stammers Helena, who didn’t miss how Dinah had asked her to share her bed and not Harley, and didn’t know quite what it meant but that it meant _something_.

“Don’t be ridiculous, there’s plenty of room. I can lend you some pajamas too,” says Dinah, eyeing Helena’s usual leather getup that doesn’t seem too comfortable to sleep in.

“Oh, okay. Thank you,” says Helena, who doesn’t quite know what to say.

“I probably have an extra toothbrush around here somewhere too,” says Dinah, turning and walking into her bedroom. Helena follows. She’s never been in Dinah’s bedroom before but it was so _her_ , bright yellow paint on the wall and clothes everywhere and secondhand furniture from the thrift stores she liked to take Helena to. She sits on Dinah’s cluttered bed, noting how comfortable it was while Dinah rummaged around in her bathroom.

“Here you go!” says Dinah, handing her a new purple toothbrush. “Pick any clothes you want, they’re all clean,” and disappears back into the bathroom to change. Helena plucks the first clothes she sees off the bed, a faded yellow t-shirt and fuzzy dark blue pajama pants with candy canes on them, and pulls them on. The shirt is baggy on her lanky frame and the pants reach only to mid-calf but Helena never wants to take them off. The bathroom door opens and Dinah emerges with a freshly scrubbed face and in a heather gray t-shirt and snowflake pajama shorts, her hair tied back, looking unfairly radiant. Helena clears her throat and steps into the bathroom, noting her red face in the mirror.

“Don’t fuck this up,” she tells her reflection sternly, and brushes her teeth with Dinah’s cinnamint toothpaste. When she’s done, she puts her purple toothbrush into the cup next to Dinah’s yellow one and it feels right. Dinah is already under the covers with her eyes closed when Helena leaves the bathroom. Quietly, so as not to disturb her, Helena slips under the blankets on the other side, her heart hammering. She thinks Dinah is asleep until she hears a sleepy, “Goodnight, H” from the other side of the bed. She swallows.

“Goodnight, Dinah,” she whispers back. Being so close to Dinah sets all of her senses heightened, every nerve tingling. She’s never going to fall asleep.

She wakes up early to weak morning light, not suddenly the way she’s used to but gradually, fuzzily. She and Dinah have met in the middle of the bed and Dinah’s arm is thrown over Helena while Helena’s forehead is nestled into the crook of Dinah’s shoulder. The realization of their positions clears Helena’s mind like a bolt of lightning and suddenly she is very, very awake. Her first instinct is to jerk away but she doesn’t want to wake Dinah up so she stays where she is, heart pounding. She doesn’t much like being touched by most people but being here, cuddling with Dinah, well, it felt right. She wonders, too, if Dinah’s presence had anything to do with the conspicuous lack of her usual nightmares during the night. She feels better rested than she has in years. Allowing herself to relax into Dinah’s embrace, Helena drifts off back to sleep. When she wakes up again to bright sunlight, golden like Dinah, she and Dinah are nose to nose, and this time Dinah is awake.

“Hey,” says Dinah, with a sweet, sleepy smile and creases on her cheeks from the pillow.

“Hey,” whispers Helena back, suddenly nervous; this reminds her of their position from last night before they were interrupted by Harley’s shenanigans and she remembers how she leaned in and--

“Can I kiss you?” blurts out Helena. Immediately, she reddens and shoves her head under the pillow. What is she _doing_ , she’s going to ruin _everything_ , Dinah doesn’t like her that way, she couldn’t--

And suddenly the pillow is being lifted from her head and she hears Dinah say her name.

“Helena, look at me.” Unwillingly, Helena lifts her head from Dinah’s sheets and looks her in the eyes, opening her mouth to apologize when suddenly Dinah leans in and meets her mouth with hers and _oh_. Dinah’s lips are soft and warm and Helena feels goosebumps rise all over her, feels a warmth slip into her core, heating her from the inside until she feels like light must be shining from every pore because Dinah is kissing her and she’s kissing her back, and God it feels so good, even better than she’d imagined, and Dinah is pulling away with softness in her eyes.

“Is that okay?” she asks.

Helena kisses her again.


End file.
